Expense Reports Stuck in "External Validation" Status

ilham

Hello,

I would like to report an issue regarding my expense claims, which have remained in the "External Validation" status for some time.

I have checked with my manager, and he has confirmed that he has not received any validation request or notification related to these expense reports.

Could you please investigate the issue and advise on the actions required to unblock the process?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Kind regards,

ID : 38D7BADAAFF640739B45

KevinD

@ilham please read this article to understand this status: What Does Pending External Validation Status Mean in SAP Concur?

Thank you,
Kevin
SAP Concur Community Manager
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samasuraj

Hi @ilham

Topic: Expense Reports Stuck in "External Validation" Status

Please check the below. Hope this helps.

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In SAP Concur Expense, reports stuck in “External Validation” generally indicate that they are waiting for a validation process outside the standard Concur approval workflow.

This may involve an external financial system, custom integration, or third-party validation service.

Recommended Troubleshooting:

Check Report Status: Navigate to Expense → Manage Expenses, open the affected report, and review its Audit Trail to identify when it entered External Validation.
Verify Approval Workflow: Ask the Concur Administrator to check which validation step or external system is responsible.
Check Integration Status: If an external validation service is configured, verify that the request was transmitted and that the response was successfully received and processed.
Review Errors: Investigate any failed API calls, integration errors, or pending validation responses.
Escalate to Support: If the report remains stuck, provide SAP Concur Support with the Report ID, employee ID, submission date, and audit trail details.

Important: Your manager may not receive an approval notification because External Validation is not necessarily a manager approval step.

Recommendation: Ask your Concur Administrator to investigate the external validation workflow and determine whether the report is waiting for a response from an integrated system. Avoid resubmitting or duplicating the expense report until its current processing status is confirmed.

One question: Are all employees' expense reports stuck in External Validation, or is the issue affecting only your reports?

This will help distinguish an integration-wide issue from a report-specific problem.

Thanks & Regards

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Samantha Prathikantam

SF_EC & ECP / SAP Concur Consultant